Just One More Misconception
by Servant of SHEVAL
Summary: Things don't go quite according to plan that night at the well... Cloud thought he'd already prepared himself to let go of Tifa, but he wasn't counting on actually having to face her.  Mild CloTi.  Drabble.


**Author's Beginning Note Thingie:** Let me say right off the bat that I hate CloTi with a burning passion... and I hate Tifa when she is badly portrayed… which, unfortunately, is very often, sometimes in canon itself. Nevertheless, I sat down to write SOMETHING after a long period of not having time to do so, and this came out... dunno from where. Without getting into specifics about my usual dislike, let's just say... I'm posting this to see how well it's received. Some new material for a new audience. Hope you enjoy.

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He hadn't meant for things to go this way.

For years and years he'd struggled, fought tooth and claw and nail to be one of them - like fighting could solve this (anything at all) kind of thing; like it ever did. He'd fought and yelled and screamed and waved his angry little fists in the chill mountain air until the skin turned red with the cold and the knuckles turned white with the strain, and all the other kids had gone home, bored with his antics.

And he'd bit and bit and chewed on those nails and that lower lip with anxiety and nerves every time he made himself visible to her: that day up in her room, that evening on the mountain - until they'd come to expect it, but never knew what it was... saw the trail of cherrysauce blood dripping down his chin or over his stubby fingers and just assumed the worst. 'how can you show yourself here, looking like that?' they'd said... but they never knew - and tonight. Tonight of all nights...

He hadn't ever meant for it to be that way, when he stood behind the schoolhouse with the stems of wild roses clutched in his hand. When he peeked around the corner of the building and saw her kissing another boy. When he gasped first in surprise (sadness, shame) and then in pain because his grip had suddenly tightened and the thorns had cut into flesh, and there they were - all of a sudden - as if they'd sensed his presence: 'oh, Cloud's gone and done it again... he's always getting into fights... hurting himself or someone else...'

'Yeah' he thought with bitterness, managing to hide the roses until he could adequately dispose of them in a trashbin, '_I'm_ the one always hurting myself. It has nothing to do with whatever everyone else does around here.'

And he hadn't meant - tonight, that is - for this to happen.

'Yeah' he thought - always. They were stupid, little kids with little dreams - if they dreamt at all... and he hadn't meant for his own plans to get so big and out of hand, but they had... striving for the position of schoolyard toughguy and catching her eye evolved into claiming the world as his playground, himself a rival to the Great Sephiroth, of all people, and her... well... that aspect of the ideal had evolved too.

She'd been kissing Johnny that night when all his ideas changed. What did he need her for? She never even looked at him. He... he didn't need her, after all! He could prove himself without her affirmation - she had never yet offered it, why bother trying to attain it? He'd made a name for himself already (albeit, a bad one) without any of her approval. To further this pursuit would be to sacrifice other potential gains... for example: to catch Tifa would mean staying in Nibelheim, where his fate was fixed and unalterable, and painfully repetitive, small, mundane. His priorities had been reordered.

And he'd only meant, tonight, for it to be a big 'fuck you' to her - Johnny - all their stupid friends - this town - the world, when he finally made a civilized spectacle of himself... hell, she might not even come, and that would be great: save him the nervous bleeding, and have everyone talking for years after about the possibilities... 'hey Tif, what _would_ have happened if you'd gone to see Cloud that night before he went away...?'

But then she had to come - and he saw her out his bedroom window, slowly making her way down in what seemed a painful, solemn march to the well - and ruin all his plans. He kept her waiting, that was for sure. The night was cold, and this was but a test... before it became too much to see that sight - the bait hovering languidly over the looming entrance to the steel trap barely disguised behind it, and he took it - her sitting there and shivering for him.

And then he came out, emerged from his den - his cave - of houselight, of warmth and comfort, into the cold dark world that (though he didn't know it at the moment) would be his home for the rest of his life... there in the dark with her.

The stars were in the sky, burning bright and silver and relatively undiluted by the pollution of the mako reactor... some miracle had brought those extraterrestrial diamonds closer to the earth that night, and she was lit with them. Glowing, there, in her little green dress with her impossibly light skin, and the midnight in her hair... her eyes sparkled and danced like the aqualune on water and he gulped and forgot what he was going to say... and already the unbitten fingernails were digging into skin - the palms of his hands as he turned them into fists - and cutting, knuckles going white, dark blood pouring down... he wiped it on his pants.

He hadn't meant to fall in love with her again, but it had happened too.


End file.
